Woodford

I wake to the ringing of his blade

and find him carving in the autumn

garden. He's taken up the night's windthrow

and laid it down to season. There's a cord

of rosewood, mulberry, beech and willow.

He works all day with chisel, mallet

and gouge, runs a thumb along a rim,

taking away, pulling another hemisphere

in, and fashions figures from husk and

hull, drawing light through a dormant bud.

He lifts a figure into his arms and rubs

in beeswax. His square hands smooth

the haunches, rounded belly, the long-sawn

limbs, the rosy skin. While he carves

he does not see that birds fall from the sky,

that dogwood burns, and the golden ash

makes itself bare; he does not hear the dry

and yellow sound when leaves make landfall.

In the evening, when maples are strung

like lanterns across the lawn, I open the door

of the garden shed and hear the breathing

of figures gathered in the dim. Bent upon

some activity of their own, they gleam

 in light slung low, living their still lives.